China replaces airport construction fee with civil aviation fee

An airport construction fee paid by passengers who take Chinese domestic flights will be replaced by a civil aviation fee, the Ministry of Finance announced Tuesday.

The ministry said in a statement that it will no longer charge the airport construction fee and will replace it with a civil aviation fee starting from April 1. The new fee will be 50 yuan (7.94 U.S. dollars) for each domestic flight, the same amount as the previous fee.

Passengers on feeder line flights will not have to pay the fee. However, passengers on international flights will have to pay a fee of 90 yuan, of which 20 yuan will be set aside for a tourism development fund, according to the ministry.

Outbound passengers with diplomatic passports or passengers under the age of 12 will not have to pay the fee, according to the statement.

The fee will go into a civil aviation development fund after being collected by the airlines and brought under governmental budgetary management, the ministry said.

The new fee will not create an additional burden on passengers, as it is unchanged in scope and standard, according to an unnamed ministry official.

The civil aviation development fund was created by combining the previous airport construction fee and a civil aviation infrastructure construction fund levied on airlines to boost the efficiency of the two funds, the official said.

The fund will be spent on infrastructure construction, airline subsidies, energy conservation, training, equipment replacement and technological development, the ministry said, adding that the fund will not be diverted for other purposes.